Astronomers may have discovered an exoplanet that has found the elixir to planetary youth — streams of radiation from its white dwarf star, which could have knocked billions of years off its apparent age.

An active sunspot has been blasting coronal mass ejections in our direction, creating fantastic northern lights displays much further south than usual. In this case, Mike Taylor (miketaylorphoto.com) captured a multi-colored display.

TrES-2b, a planet nicknamed "Dark Knight" because it reflects so little light, will cross the face of its host star Saturday (June 27) in a "transit" captured by the online Slooh Community Observatory. You can watch the free event live at 8 p.m. EDT.

The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, painted the sky with brilliant ribbons of color this week, and the colorful displays could continue, following another solar explosion spotted by NASA.

Singer-songwriter Craig Werth has written a song called "Oh Pluto" to highlight and celebrate NASA's New Horizons mission, which will give the world its first up-close looks at the dwarf planet during a highly anticipated flyby on July 14.

The newly observed "X-ray echo" — the largest and brightest of its type ever caught on camera — has allowed researchers to pin down the location of the neutron star Circinus X-1, which lies 30,700 light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have detected carbon smog permeating the interstellar atmospheres of early galaxies, confirming that these ancient galaxies were mostly dust free. The discovery should shed light on how galaxies grew in the universe's early days.

The Rosetta probe, which is currently orbiting a comet as it hurtles around the sun, has been given an extended lifetime that will likely end with the spacecraft falling down onto the surface of the comet, officials announced yesterday.

Venus' volcanoes are likely still spewing out lava, a new study suggests.The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft observed temperatures spiking by several hundred degrees Fahrenheit in some spots on the planet's surface.

Alien worlds with helium skies might be fairly common throughout the universe, researchers say. Indeed, one such helium-rich exoplanet might have already been discovered just 33 light-years from Earth.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted a strange dark patch at the pole of Pluto's big moon Charon, further whetting researchers' appetites ahead of the probe's epic flyby of the dwarf planet system next month.

Auroras reached as far south as Philadelphia yesterday (June 22) after a massive burst of particles was ejected from the sun and pummeled Earth's atmosphere. This strong solar storm continues to rage, and auroras are expected be visible again tonight.

During its 13.5 years in orbit, Mars Odyssey has spotted the first evidence of water ice on Mars, mapped the entire Red Planet surface in vivid detail, and coordinated the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers' communications with Earth.

Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, which was halted in April after a series of protests, will resume on Wednesday (June 24), project representatives said in a statement issued over the weekend.

A monster black hole in the heart of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 1097 has the mass of 140 million suns, according to new measurements. A vivid video by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory describes how researchers "weighed" the black hole.

The new image resolves Ceres' strange spots into a cluster comprised of several patches, some of which were not visible in previous photos. But it doesn't solve the mystery of the spots' origin and composition.